Greg Pearson is a Senior Program Officer with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in Washington, D.C. In that role, he develops and manages new areas of activity within the NAE Program Office related to K-12 engineering education, technological literacy, and the public understanding of engineering. Greg currently serves as the responsible staff officer for two NSF-funded projects: “Exploring Content Standards for Engineering Education in K-12” and “Changing the Conversation: From Research to Action.” He was the study director (and co-editor) for the project that resulted in the 2009 publication of Engineering in K-12 Education: Understanding the Status and Improving the Prospects, an analysis of efforts to teach engineering to U.S. school children. He oversaw the NSF-funded project that resulted in the 2008 publication of Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering and was co-editor of the reports Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy (2006) and Technically Speaking: Why All Americans Need to Know More About Technology (2002). In the late 1990s, Greg oversaw NAE and National Research Council reviews of technology education content standards developed by the International Technology Education Association. He works collaboratively with colleagues within and outside the National Academies on a variety of projects involving K-12 science, mathematics, technology, and engineering education, and the public understanding of engineering and science. Greg has an undergraduate degree in biology from Swarthmore College and a graduate degree in journalism from The American University.

Paul: Thanks for bringing this to our attention. William Kamkwamka's story exemplifies the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of engineering. He is truly making a world of difference! William has established an NGO to raise money to build more windmills in Malawi, the Moving Windmills Project: http://www.williamkamkwamba.typepad.com /.

Abraham: Thanks for this post. Part of engineering's image problem may be a failure of individuals in the field to publicly note thier professional status. But an equally important issue is connecting in the public mind the title and work of the engineer to things average folks care about, such as quality of life, creativity and innovation, solving big societal challenges, like the need for clean energy sources, etc. This of course is the purpose of the NAE effort to encourage more effective and consistent messaging. It's not enough to assert how great engineering is; the trick is to build a case that engineering is not only essential but "makes a world of difference."

John: Thanks for pointing us to these resources. The CTC team is hopeful that in the next month, we may have the resources to launch a focused social media "push" for engineering messaging. Stay tuned for that. One of the interesting challenges with the STEM acronym is that it means different things to different groups. Our interest in this project is on the "E," which tend to be mostly silent in STEM discussions, at least at the K-12 level. The NAE and the National Research Council are just beginning a new project to examine the potential for integration between and among the STEM disciplines. More info on that here: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49378 .

Lily: Great to have you as a CTC member, and CSU-LB looks like it's ahead of the curve on outreach to girls and young women. I couldn't find the "My Daughter is an Engineer" program, however. Are you aware of the NAE's Engineer Your Life site ( www.engineeryourlife.org)? It would fit nicely with your efforts, as would Engineer Girl! ( www.engineergirl.org). It would be helpful to the overall cause of engineering outreach if the CSU-LB engineering outreach website included some mention of the CTC project and perhaps even incorporated some of its messages. Greg

Laura: Take a look at the five case studies currently on the CTC site ( http://www.engineeringmessages.org/23673/26035.aspx ) and let us know if you think you have enough material and data to do something similar. We'd love to get the word out about GEMS and its messaging efforts.

Ben: Thanks for sharing your thoughts about public understanding of computer engineering/science. I believe the National Center for Women & Information Technology has undertaken an re-branding effort that you might want to check out. Ditto for ACM. If you write a song based on one of the CTC messages, let us know. We might post it!

Interesting idea, Laura. We know from our research presented in the 2008 Changing the Conversation report that girls respond more positively than boys to images with people in them, and boys tend to gravitate toward pictures of "things." Overall, people we asked tended to see engineers as not connected to or engaged with people, and this suggests a greater focus in messaging on the human side of engineering could be beneficial.